I have written about receiving my first Pfizer coronavirus vaccine here.
Pfizer have stated that the second dose of its Covid-19 vaccine should be delivered to individuals within three weeks of the first. They state that, “there are no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days”.
On 30 December the UK chief medical officers announced that the second dose of covid vaccines would be given towards the end of 12 weeks rather than in the recommended 3 weeks. They added that vaccine shortages were a major reason for the shift in approach and that the government’s advisory committee decided that vaccinating as many people as possible with a first dose should be the priority.
Meanwhile
The World Health
Organization has declared
that delaying the
second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech beyond
21 days should take place only
under “exceptional circumstances”, and
that any change to this
would be considered "off-label use."
The British Medical Association has called the decision “unreasonable and totally unfair” and have commented, “the decision to delay the second Pfizer/BioNTec dose to between 4-12 weeks is not based on data.”
As if that was not enough to worry about, the government are now considering giving people the Oxford-AstraZeneca dose followed by the Pfizer one, or vice-versa.
But there’s no evidence to show these two very different vaccines can work in this way. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention have stated that the vaccines are not interchangeable.
Vaccine expert John Moore, at Cornell University, commented that officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess”.
The Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty commented “ Last summer the health secretary, Matt Hancock, boasted that “we have already secured 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine.” This became,“30 million doses available by September”, which got halved to “aiming to deliver up to 15 million doses in 2020”.
There is a complete absence of long term planning by the government which is resulting in under-investment by Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies in their UK operations.
The Johnson government’s approach seems to be all about cutting corners or just making it up as they go along.
Meanwhile on the day I received my vaccine Cabinet minister Dominic Raab went on Sky News and refused to guarantee that all people who have received a first dose of coronavirus vaccine will get a second jab even within 12 weeks.
I am beginning to feel sick and vaccines won't cure me.
